Back in the olden days, early settlers The Go-Betweens sailed from Brisbane to Glasgow and explored the watery territory of nostalgia pop, drawing the map for a Scottish tradition that continued with Orange Juice and Camera Obscura, and is presently embodied in Belle and Sebastian. The common thread being economic well built pop songs with a vague longing for something past - (well percolated now in the Go-Betweens case because they really are in the past - but even when they were current, The Go-Betweens still pined for a better more innocent past.)
Charting a course through the waters of this sort of music can be treacherous. There you are, skimming across the water like a stone, your sails filled with wistful longing, your library bag flapping in the breeze, when suddenly you realise you are too close to the rocks and before you know it the listener is floundering and left stranded on a maudlin shore.
Such is the line Belle and Sebastian must navigate, and at their March 10 show at the Sydney Opera House they more often than not managed to stay on the cheerful side of it. Their distinctive organ and trumpet sound and impeccably placed guitar licks keeps everything cheerful. But Stuart Murdoch's thin high voice sometimes takes on a whiny and precious note and having enjoyed their music for years without seeing them live, Murdoch's rock star strutting was unexpected and sat incongruously with Belle and Sebastian's jam sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer vibe. What saves it from the murk is the deadpan delivery of often caustic and hilarious lyrics. A first listen will sound mournful, a second listen will sound funny.
Maintaining the more expected nervous chat and self deprecatory humour was left up to guitarist and other singer Stevie Jackson, but his contribution far exceeded between song banter. His layered, reverby noodlings are easy to take for granted on CD but are impossible to ignore live and were reason enough to turn up on a school night. Jackson's work and self-effacing demeanour more truly carries on the Go-Betweens legacy than Murdoch's posturings and he is - not to belittle Murdoch's inward looking songs - responsible for some of the more cheerful songs.
If the show drifted occasionally close to the deadening rocks of murk, it was not the fault of the band: alongside Jackson, Richard Colburn's unexpectedly solid drumming, Chris Geddes' well placed keyboards, Sarah Martin's distinctive vocals n violin, plus a rung-in string section created a densely woven wall of wistful.
No, the chink in the armour is the man tied to the mast: Murdoch has had according to my friend, an "irony bypass" and "Fox in the Snow" and "Get Me Out of Here I'm Dying" did seem unnecessarily sooky.
But this is harsh because the reward for sitting through the odd squirmy moment is hearing early movie-theme evocative songs like "Expectations" and the latest album's "I Want the World to Stop” from the current holders of the title of most nostalgic band in the world.
- Lindsay Dunbar 2011 -
- Lindsay Dunbar 2011 -
